Ever feel like this?

Yesterday I had a job interview. The most difficult one and in some respects the most important one in my life. The way I am feeling today can best be described in a picture...

I trust that everything will work out the way the Lord ordains, but for now I am feeling a little out of sorts and like this new opportunity may be just out of reach.

Status Check

This week on the job...

Double click on the comic, if you are having problems reading it.

He looks how I feel...

Who Packs Your Parachute?

Charles Plumb was a Navy jet pilot in Vietnam . After 75 combat missions, his plane was destroyed by a surface-to-air missile. Plumb ejected and parachuted into enemy hands. He was captured and spent 6 years in a communist Vietnamese prison.He survived the ordeal and now lectures on lessons learned from that experience!

One day, when Plumb and his wife were sitting in a restaurant, a man at another table came up and said, "You're Plumb! You flew jet fighters in Vietnam from the aircraft carrier Kitty Hawk . You were shot down !"

"How in the world did you know that ?" asked Plumb."I packed your parachute," the man replied. Plumb gasped in surprise and gratitude. The man pumped his hand and said, "I guess it worked!"

Plumb assured him, "It sure did. If your chute hadn't worked, I wouldn't be here today." Plumb couldn't sleep that night, thinking about that man. Plumb says, I kept wondering what he had looked like in a Navy uniform: a white hat; a bib in the back; and bell-bottom trousers. I wonder how many times I might have seen him and not even said 'Good morning, how are you?'or anything because, after all, I was a fighter pilot and he was just a sailor. Plumb thought of the many hours the sailor had spent at a long wooden table in the bowels of the ship, carefully weaving the shrouds and folding the silks of each chute, holding in his hands each time the fate of someone he didn't know.

Now, Plumb asks his audience, "Who's packing your parachute ?"

Everyone has someone who provides what they need to make it through the day. He also points out that he needed many kinds of parachutes when his plane was shot down over enemy territory -- he needed his physical parachute, his mental parachute, his emotional parachute, and his spiritual parachute. He called on all these supports before reaching safety. Sometimes in the daily challenges that life gives us, we miss what is really important. We may fail to say hello, please, or thank you, congratulate someone on something wonderful that has happened to them, give a compliment, or just do something nice for no reason. As you go through this week, this month, this year, recognize people who pack your parachutes.

I am posting this as my way of thanking you for your part in packing my parachute!

Dreams

In the last few weeks I have been experiencing some C-R-A-Z-Y dreams.
Last night was just the latest in the round when I dreamt I arrived in Ethiopia only to discover while riding in what can only be described as a hay wagon that I had lost my purse and with it was my passport, money and needed documentation. Along the way several people appeared and disappeared offering sage advice...an old roommate that I haven't seen or talked to in nearly 10 years, the Sunday School superintendent at my church, Tia, Dedra, an ex-boyfriend and a Jamaican crooner who sang to me so I would forget my troubles. My BFF Aimee was with me, but when I discovered my predicament, she crawled into a "man hole" in a field and was never seen again.
And before you ask...no I did not eat some crazy food before retiring for the evening. Like I said this is just the latest in a series.
A few weeks ago I dreamt I was on a road trip with the ladies from church and my other BFF Angie when we stopped at a convenience mart. In the parking lot was Aimee, Brynly and all of the other members of Team Ethiopia. They were all posing for a group photo and I went over to them. During the conversation I realized the members of my original group had left me and I went hunting for them. I entered a building only to find in one room a family posing for those Old Time Photographs that you find in vacation spots across the country and in the other room there was a town council meeting going on that resembled a Salem Witch trial.

NOTE: If you want to bail out now, that's fine because these dreams get stranger.

I then ended up in a room with a red-headed woman I had never seen before. She was explaining to me how she was going to become a priest and had adopted a child. She then went over to her closet, moved a row of clothes aside and there was a little girl's room. I was very upset that this little girl was being hidden, but before I could say anything she told me "THEY" were ready for me upstairs. In my dream, I apparently knew who they were. So I started up this spiral staircase that went on and on for a very long time. At the top there was rows and rows of white doors, but the walkway was very narrow and while I could see Aimee, Tia and Dedra ahead of me, they would open a door and disappear. It felt as if there was a man chasing me at this point, although I never saw him. I woke up soon after this and just felt creeped out.
Then there was the dream where I went to Atlanta to meet up with Aimee and the group we were going to take a trip to Ethiopia. However when I got on the plane to travel from DC to Atlanta I realized I had forgotten to get a passport. I told Aimee and she was OK with it. However someone on the plane told me that if I went ahead and ordered the passport from a web site, it would be sufficient and I could go. So when we landed at the Atlanta Airport, I found an open office door, let myself in and came face to face with an old Apple computer from the 80s. I tried to access the Internet, but in the middle of the process the office's rightful inhabitant showed up. He was a French professor who didn't speak English, so I tried as best I could to communicate that I needed a passport by using what French I still remembered from my college days. And yes, you guessed it...he opened up a file drawer and handed me a passport. And then I woke up.
Not all dreams have to do with Ethiopia or adoption though. I think I had a dream about heaven. In it I was floating along these amazing pathways that was filled with the most gorgeous vegetation I had ever seen. I mean the colors were so vibrant, the blooms were fragrant and when I reached out and ate a strawberry taken straight from the vine, it was amazing. The only other specific plants featured in the dream were cherry tomatoes and pink roses. And that was the gist of the dream.

So if dreams are a glimpse into our minds...I am beginning to think, I may be losing mine!

My Best Bud Aimee

Nineteen years ago this month I met my longest and dearest friend Aimee. We crossed paths on our very first day of college. She had just moved into a room one door down and across from mine. She remembers seeing me for the first time and whispering to her dad..."Boy she looks scared." He suggested that she introduce herself.
That night at the college's very reverent convocation welcoming the freshman class, Aimee sat next to me. She wore a cow shirt and matching hair bow (that's a whole different story), sighed every two minutes and asked me frequently (in a voice that I will inaccurately describe as a whisper) when the thing was going to be over. I ignored her and tried to move my wooden chair closer to the silent person sitting on the other side of me, but there was something about her. That night while most of the rest of our freshman hall headed to the bar, Aimee stayed behind with me and two of the other girl's on our hall playing Trivial Pursuit.
That was the beginning of our friendship.
We soon discovered that our homes were only 20 miles apart, but at the time that is where the similarities ended. Aimee was irreverent and a free spirit. Through the years she challenged me to see things through different perspectives.
It has taken quite a few years for me to understand the enormous impact our friendship has had on my entire life.
Aimee has single handedly changed my definition of friendship. In my teen years I had volatile relationships with my friends and felt like I should be grateful that people were actually willing to hang out with me. I had some self-esteem issues, and my friends played on those insecurities. At times it felt like I was a loser in a cruel game. But Aimee never made me feel that way. She made me realize that the ease of our conversation and our complete trust in each other was what the true definition of friendship was. She never made me prove myself to her or earn the right to be part of her life. And as I started the metamorphosis into the strong, independent woman I am today, Aimee applauded and encouraged the journey. She never tried to hold me to my past, she allowed me to break free and grow. And truth is, she still allows me to grow because she is growing herself.
Aimee opened my eyes to some of my greatest passions...travel, the arts and fine dining. She allowed me to experience these things with the wide-eyed wonder of a child without ever making me feel like a lesser person. Whether it was tasting calamari, seeing my first show on Broadway or walking out on the beach in Aruba, each of these experiences were made better because she was there and I know the same will hold true when we board that plane to Ethiopia to meet my daughter.
Aimee has been the foundation in my adoption support system. She has offered an ear when I needed it, tons of advice and has given a voice to some of my innermost thoughts when my heart would not let me speak.
And while this post has been kind of sappy, what I love most about our friendship, is our ability to laugh. Sometimes when we are together I laugh until I can't breathe, tears stream down my face and well, you know the rest.
Aimee's advice is often peppered with sarcasm, wit and experience. Just last night I explained that I needed to delve into my travel drawer to see if I had a sample of shampoo because I had forgot to add that item to my shopping list. She then spoke with the voice of experience, "Just don't use dog shampoo. I tried it once and the results are not pretty"
And because I want to be just as good of a friend to her as she has been to me...I will stop this post there.

Trading Spaces

Now that my summer plans have wound down and I have checked off VBS, vacation and the charity auction I was assisting with, I have some time to get started on the projects at home that have been accumulating on my "To-Do" list.
Top on the list is the bedrooms.
I have been in the process of converting my dressing room (a.k.a the spare bedroom) into Jaci's bedroom. I never really made good use of this room in the two years that I have lived here, so I feel like the wonderful decorations I painstakenly scoured three states to find kind of went to waste. In fact I still have a box of decorations that never got unpacked. That was until I was cleaning my bedroom this weekend and had the brilliant idea to re-do the room. Currently the room is garnished with lilacs, lovely flowers and pale yellow decor. but I am ready for a change and so I am going to take everything from the underused dressing room in its Parisian Vogue theme and transfer it to my bedroom this weekend. The best part is the only thing I will need to purchase is some new linens.
I really think I can get my room completed this weekend , which will pave the way for getting Jaci's room done next. Her bedding is purchased and the decorations to turn it into a sparkly butterfly retreat are all in place. I have already picked out her bed and a couple of additional pieces of furniture I want to add to the room, I just need to get my stuff out of there, so I can order them and have them delivered.
Once the rooms are completed, I will post some pictures.
I guess this is what they call NESTING. LOL!